Paul Pumpens, PhD, graduated from the Chemical Department of the University of Latvia in 1970 and earned his PhD in molecular biology from the Latvian Academy of Sciences, Riga and DSc from the Institute of Molecular Biology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, USSR. Dr. Pumpens started his research career as a research fellow at the Institute of Organic Synthesis, where he conducted research from 1973 to 1989. He served as head of the Laboratory of Protein Engineering at the Institute of Organic Synthesis (1989-1990), as head of the Department of Protein Engineering at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Latvian Academy of Sciences (since 1993, the Biomedical Research and Study Centre) in Riga (1990-2002), and as scientific director of the Biomedical Research and Study Centre (2002-2014). He served as a professor of the Biological Department of the University of Latvia from 1999 until 2013. Dr. Pumpens pioneered genetic engineering research in Latvia. He was one of the first in the world to perform successful cloning of the hepatitis B virus genome and the expression of hepatitis B virus genes in bacterial cells. His major scientific interests are in designing novel recombinant vaccines and diagnostic reagents and development of tools for gene therapy based on virus-like particles. Dr. Pumpens is an author of more than 300 scientific papers and issues or pending patents. He has edited, together with Dr. Yury E. Khudyakov, the Taylor & Francis book Viral Nanotechnology (2015) and authored the Taylor & Francis book Single-stranded RNA phages: From molecular biology to nanotechnology (2020). Dr. Peter Pushko graduated in 1984 from the University of Latvia, Riga, USSR and received his doctorate degree in Molecular Biology in 1990 from the University of Tartu (Tartu, Estonia) under mentorship of Dr. Paul Pumpens. He worked at the Institute of Molecular Biology (Riga, Latvia) on chimeric virus-like particles derived from bacteriophage fr and from hepatitis B virus. He completed postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Virology (Berlin, Germany), State Bacteriological Laboratory (Stockholm, Sweden) and Imperial Cancer Research Fund (Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, U.K.) From 1994 to 2000, Dr. Pushko worked at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID, Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA) as the National Research Council fellow. During this period, he developed RNA vector system from Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) virus replicon and prepared experimental vaccines against Ebola, Marburg, and Lassa hemorrhagic fever viruses. In 2000-2010, Dr. Pushko worked at Novavax, Inc., (Rockville, MD), where he developed recombinant virus-like particles (VLPs) as vaccines against influenza. Since 2010, Dr. Pushko serves as the President and Chief Scientific Officer at Medigen Inc. (Frederick, Maryland), a biopharmaceutical company developing innovative vaccines for emerging infectious diseases and cancer. His scientific interests include vaccine development for emerging viruses, such as pandemic influenza, alpha-, arena-, and flaviviruses. He developed several novel vaccine technologies including VEE replicon vector, influenza VLPs, and DNA-launched live-attenuated vaccines. Dr. Pushko is the author of over 50 patents and 70 publications.
